Twitter says winning war on trolls

Twitter claims it has beaten down internet trolls by employing various safety measures over the years. It also expressed the view that users feel a lot more safer now and are reporting many more complaints, helping the microblogger manage trolls.

Earlier in February, Dick Costolo, Twitter's former chief executive officer, had said the company sucked at dealing with trolls.

Speaking to The Independent, Bruce Daisley, Twitter's European head, said: "We have spent longer and put more effort into user safety than any other issue. The measures we've taken correlate directly with a reduction in the amount of bad behaviour on the platform."

"If someone is behaving in a way characteristic of a bad actor, we send them a phone verification. That allows us to tell the user that what they do here exists in the real world. It normally acts as a stark reminder. Secondly, it allows us to see whether that user has already got other accounts set up on their phone that have been suspended," he added.

Twitter has also handed new tools to users to block trolls and to expose offenders by sharing their list of blocked accounts. Daisley, who has previously worked with YouTube, said: "What you will see next year is Twitter as a business taking more responsibility for ensuring that when you come to the site, its pages are filled with the very best content for you."

Meanwhile, Del Harvey, who has charge of trust and safety at Twitter, said the company plans to double down on policing abuse. She also pledged to give users as much control as possible for their protection.

Separately, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's general counsel, told the Washington Post that "certain types of abuse on our platform have gone unchecked." However, "we are also overhauling our safety policies to give our teams a better framework from which to protect vulnerable users, such as banning the posting of non-consensual intimate images as well as expanding our definition of 'abuse' to ban indirect threats of violence."

Laura Higgins, online safety operation manager at UK Safer Internet Centre, which works with Twitter, said the platform had recently "made huge improvements by introducing new reporting routes, even trying to block persistent offenders from posting in the first place".

Launched in March 2006, the social network has 320 million monthly active users and one billion unique visits per month. About 80% are active users on mobile. The platform supports more than 35 languages.